Some pundits project that video will soon dominate all content on the internet. While this seems unlikely, video is the fastest growing marketing vehicle, doubling in volume from just 2010 to 2012, and triple digit growth expected thru 2015! (Source: Cisco)

This growth and popularity is propelling videos importance in the marketing mix. Not surprisingly, YouTube dominates video usage with 43% of all views. (Source: comScore).

Why consider video?

According to Forrester Research, “any given video in the index stands about a 50 times better chance of appearing on the first page of results than any given text page in the index.” Need more convincing? Google purchased YouTube. It is no coincidence that videos often rank highest in search engine results.

Consumers are increasingly flooded by blog content, news articles and reviews. Humans simply can’t consume that much text. Consumer preference will therefore shift toward video as the primary way to learn about products and services. (Source: MarketingProfs)

Video is becoming even more strategic now that mobile marketing is integral to every marketing campaign. With the emergence of smart-phones and mobile device growth, a large portion of the population can view a video from anywhere, and it will be more convenient than attempting to read text off a 3.7 inch screen. B

YouTube Basics

Since YouTube controls the video market, it only makes sense to explain the details of how to implement your YouTube channel. Following are the steps:

2. Fill in Information accordingly and choose your brand name as the “Username” in the required fields (note 20 character username limit)

3. Go to your channel and upload custom backgrounds by clicking on “Channel Settings” and navigating to the “Appearance” tab. Note that your avatar and background picture MUST be less than 1MB.

4. Within the channel settings, click on the “Info and Settings” tab in order to fill out your meta title, description and tags for your channel. Make sure you include important keywords.

5. Stay on channel settings and click the “Tabs” Tab so you can let YouTube know which tab users should see when first going to your channel. If you choose the “Featured” tab, you have options for layouts to choose from. We recommend the Featured or Video tabs as your default, since the “Feeds” tab is so similar to the status update function of Facebook and Twitter.

6. Now upload your video(s) by clicking on “Video Manager”. Note that videos must be no longer than 15 minutes and 2GB in size. Your most recent video upload will be in the top position, but you can use the YouTube admin tool to move any video in the channel to the top position.

7. Next optimize each uploaded video for search by choosing a title with keywords, along with a keyword-rich description of the video content.

Keywords are fundamental to your video success and include any significant words or phrases that are used to describe the contents of the video. YouTube will suggest keywords to you, but they are often inaccurate. Spend 5 minutes brainstorming keywords to add. This will dramatically increase your search result ranking.

Video & Social Integration & Promotion

Once your YouTube channel is established, how do you promote it?

First, have a YouTube logo and hyperlink on your website and blog pages. Next include the YouTube logo and hyperlink in all employee email signatures. Certainly all forms of Internet or electronic communications should include the YouTube logo and hyperlink, even PDF documents can have active hyperlinks.

With these promotion basics accomplished, now you can distribute individual videos via other social networks. Embedding the video in other social networks dramatically increases the amount of views and elevates your video in search engines. Be sure to post videos on Facebook, websites and blogs. Tweet about the video with links. Include the video in a press release.

Creating a VLOG or “video blog” of your video is HIGHLY encouraged. This is where you transcribe videos that contain a narrative, embed the video and place them in your blog. This has been proven to be a useful tactic for having search engines index your video and content.

When it comes to distributing your video, dare to dream of all the possibilities, and remember to ask for engagement from your customers. “What do you think of this video?” is a great place to start.